Callum Amies - The Bottom Line 'Blending Old School & New Wave Pop Punk In The Best Way'
Raise your hand if you miss the early 2000's. American Pie films, Blink-182, Sum 41 and Simple Plan was on our CD players every day... it was a good life. Fast forward almost 20 years and our favourite version of pop/punk is making a massive resurgence. Kind of. Sum 41's gone all metal, Blink-182's trying to maintain their king of pop/punk status (barely!), and Simple Plan have just entered the studio to create their 6th studio album.
Enter The Bottom Line, a young upcoming band from the UK who have managed to nail that classic pop punk sound on their recent full-length release, No Vacation. They've toured with Simple Plan and the Offspring, and while they've yet to reach Aussie shores, you might have heard or seen their song "Reasons" make some noise online. So in light of their recent album release, we grabbed frontman Callum Amies to chat about their online success, the making of No Vacation, and when Australia will make it on their touring circuit.
I love your new album, No Vacation! How stoked are you to have it out, and how has the response been so far?
We were so nervous for this to come out, so it’s been 10 times better than we ever imagined. We had over 100k streams in the first week which is absolutely mad for a band our size.
What was the recording process like on No Vacation compared to your previous releases?
Oh my god, well our last EP (I Still Hate You) we recorded ourselves and then sent it off to our friend Frank Joly, who mixes all the Simple Plan albums and he just agreed to mix it for free for us. We spent like 35-40 pounds on that whole EP so like to go from that to one of the biggest producers in the UK for rock, was just insane.
Let’s talk about leading single ‘Reasons’. It’s been out for a while now, and I gotta say it’s definitely one of my all-time favourite songs released over the last few years! The music video is from your time at last year’s Download Festival and it’s already amassed 100k on Youtube! Did you guys expect that song to become such a massive hit?
Thank you so much! No, not at all! We actually were putting that song out as more of a hype song rather than a single. But then turns out it’s the most listened to song we’ve ever released. It’s quite interesting to see how well that song played out.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASj6ggfNry8&w=640&h=360]
What’s your favourite song recorded for No Vacation?
Ooh, that’s tough. Probably 'Doomed', because we never really branched out and played with different instruments apart from just 2 guitars, bass and drums and vocals, this one had like acoustic guitar layers, shakers, we had just branched as far as we are concerned for music. It’s still very safe and pop punk, but it was nice to do something different for us which is really cool.
I noticed that 'Doomed' and quite a few other tracks on the album are straight up emo/pop punk.
Yeah! We wrote half the songs when we were on tour with Simple Plan. We toured the UK, USA and Canada with those guys. Everywhere but Australia.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBuk34f-CZ8&w=640&h=360]
In saying that though, your sound is sooo reminiscent of one of my favourite genres - early 2000s pop punk. Do you guys feel like you were born in the wrong era?
(Laughs) Absolutely! But then again I love a lot of the new music at the moment, but it seems like everything in pop punk now has just gone into the same old pattern, like there’s a lot of new bands that sound identical. No one really does the old school, early 2000’s sound anymore, so we kinda try to blend the two together, if you know what I mean. You can’t really repeat the OG pop/punk though, but we do our best to blend the two together.
Out of all the bands you’ve gone on tour with in the past, who’s been your favourite and the most memorable?
We played with The Offspring in Europe and we played a show in Prague, and it was like 8000 people in an ice hockey arena and it was the biggest show we’d ever played. It was terrifyingly big.
What’s on the cards for The Bottom Line for the remainder of this year?
We’ve got a few tours lined up, and another music video coming out soon, which should be exciting. We’ve got a load of small UK festivals this summer too.
Well, Download has now branched out to Australia. Maybe we'll see ya here on next year's lineup?
Hopefully! We definitely want to get out to Australia when we can too!
Thanks for chatting, Callum!
Interview by Tamara May (@citylightsTAM)
No Vacation is out now. Listen here!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DMHIbjRMa0&w=853&h=480]
